The Gender Playground: Co-Creating Gender Through Play and Performance

Abstract

This thesis reviews the literature on theories of human development, gender identity anddevelopment, and play. I argue against prescriptive, colonial, stage-based theories of gender and development, which constrict them to binary dichotomies and activities that merely occur in childhood. I instead recast gender and development as life-span, fluid activities. This thesis adopts a sociocultural, social therapeutic, performative, “gender playground” lens, offering play and performance as activities with revolutionary potential for reimagining gender in new and liberatory ways, and outlines three interrelated areas of activity that can support gender play and exploration in people throughout the life span. These activities are a social therapeutic community, gender art, and theatrical gender play. By playing with gender in safe, co-created, social environments, we can create beyond the gender binary to liberate and connect us all in new, revolutionary ways.